As the country ushers in new administration under the leadership of Asiwaju Ahmed Bola Tinubu, Public Affairs Analyst and Development Consultant, Jide Ojo has advised that as part of plans to curb corruption cases, the President should implement the Whistle-blower protection laws where people who disclose information to help the government to fight corruption are protected with their families.
In an interview, Ojo also called on the need for the President to create special courts for dealing with corruption cases just as we have the special courts for election petitions.
According to him, Nigeria can also amend it laws to have special courts that will only be used for fight against corruption adding thatnwith these,corruption cases will not last up to 7 to 10 years.
He expressed concern that the corruption perception index at present has put Nigeria in a appalling situation where we score 24/100 to rank about 150 out of 180 countries survey by the Transparency Interntional .
He said Nigerians want to see the implementation of this anti-corruption laws, laws against money laundry, laws against process of crime acts and several other legislature that has been made by the past Buhari administration.
He said Nigerians want to also see appreciable numbers of corruption cases and that there should be two strong approaches dealing with these issues.
First, according to him is the soft approach which is the public enlightenment to people who know about the implications of corruption , how it impacts under development, how it impacts governance and brings about under development so that people will see graphically that is not just merger corruption we are talking about.”We are also talking about petty corruptions among the ordinary citizens ,artisans and others.
“When we talk about Anti-corruption, people are bound to look at the political class , they look at the very important personality who steals billions of Naira but they never talk about when a trader cheats others in the market, the plumbers that buys fake things for his customers, see for marks ,admission racketeering as corruption.
“They only see people who steal billions as corruption. We need more public enlightenment and full implementation on extant laws of corruption.
He further said there is need to fine tune our laws . “Also, there is need to advocate better funding for the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB) . It is a shame on the nation that the Code of the conduct does not have good funding .
“Imagine ermarking less than N1billion to the Bureau. The Bureau is meant to investigate the assest declaration forms . This verification could take investigators to foreign countries to ascertain the authenticity of those who own those properties but situation where they are given peanuts is unhelpful.
“Also, other institutions who need funding is the Code of Conduct Tribunal , the Auditor-General of the Federation and the Accountant General of the Federation and other statutory offices like the Nigerian Police Force, the National Assembly particularly the Public Accounts Committees that are suppose to act on reports, educate and enlighten the public on the consequences of corruption as well as development of the country,” he said.